We held our open day on Saturday 26th July at the Old Telephone Exchange club house on Cresswell Road in Ellington.
We had several stations set up for CW ( morse ) , HF , VHF , UHF , Repeater and packet radio talks a digital modes table showing DSTAR , DMR and YSF which can all now access networks via our repeater , GB7NE. There was a Lora Mesh table showing various bought and hand made LoRa nodes.
Outside we had a Satellite station using the Q100 satellite . In the park we had antenna demonstrations and a Qrp station using a (tr)uSDX kit radio .
The day was very well attended with around 60 visitors throughout the day with a good mix of licenced people , folk wanting to get licenced and curious families and other people that had heard the Koast Radio broadcast and social media posts about our Open Day . There were little groups of people all over chatting about and demonstrating their passion in the radio Hobby also families on holiday turned up and at least a couple of the young teens were interested in Satellite and also morse code which did surprise some .
I also brought along a collection of old GPO test meters and other curio as the building was originally a working Telephone Exchange.
Derek Smith G1ZJQ even climbed up a hill , Long Cragg in the Cheviots , especially to make contacts with interested people that were wanting to try out radio .
We had an excellent day , the weather was perfect and old friends meeting up and new ones made throughout the day .
We will most definitely be holding other events like this 👍 thank you to all that attended and made the day what it was , the generous donations for the tombola and the hard working members that got involved and made the day happen 👍 .
